Historical criticism

“ Reticence is not a national characteristic—far otherwise. The phrase "national characteristic" is, I know well, a cant phrase, and, as such, full of the dangers of abuse. Historical and ethnographical criticism, proceeding on popular lines, has tried from time to time to fix certain tendencies to certain races, and to argue from individuals to generalities with a freedom that every law of induction belies. ”

“ The answer to the second on the other hand will be not only of general, but of scientific interest, for it will trace the steps by which the imaginative reconstruction of history strangely distorting the relative significance of men and events, has slowly but steadily pushed aside the truth, until it has invaded not only the text-books but the works of historians whose reputation gives their utterances a certain authority. ”

“ If the last is the case it throws new light on the possibility of the development of unhistorical narratives and renders nugatory so much of apologetic criticism as is based on the belief that legendary narratives cannot grow up and displace the truth in a few years in an age abounding with documents. ”

“ The art of writing history has two very distinct branches, the combination of which is essential to the production of a complete historian. A research into, and a criticism of, events with no other aim than to elicit truth, is one branch of the historical art ”

“ But written history often becomes shot-riddled by criticism and is set away, at last, like battle-flags, after many honorable campaigns, in some museums of relics or some temple of fame. Unless such trophies continue to awaken in the living present a sort of enthusiasm and a sense of unity with the past experience of our race, then are our historic standards but antiquarian rubbish, indeed, as useless and unmeaning as the banners and symbols of heraldry.
The subject of History is the self-conscious development of the human race, the Ego of Humanity. ”

“ Personally, I have felt that the criticism was unjust to the distinguished chief justice, whose purity of character and whose uprightness and integrity as an individual and as a jurist was beyond reproach, as it leaves the impress that he had prejudged the cause. Such a thing was not to be thought of and surely was not intended by the criticism, but the elucidation was at once so felicitous and apropos as to lead to the utter rout and vanquish ment of Stephen and Franklin and James. ”

“ It is unhappily easier to discredit criticism in the realm of ecclesiastical than of secular history; and this school of writers are doing their best to harm the cause of true Rationalism. They only afford amusement to the obscurantists of orthodoxy, and render doubly difficult the task of those who seek to win people over to a common-sense and historical envisagement, unencumbered by tradition and superstition, of the problems of early Christianity. ”

“ No new sources of value relative to the history of the Oregon question have been discovered and the extraordinary posthumous fame of Marcus Whitman is found to rest upon the unsubstantial foundation of a fictitious narrative first published many years after his alleged achievement.
When a traditional narrative is subjected to criticism two questions present themselves: "Is it true?"—and if not: "How did it come to be believed to be true?" In other words, "What is its origin and history?" The answer to the first question is of especial interest only to students of American history. ”

“ Figgis expresses it, a way of “letting down the laity into the new positions of the Higher Criticism.” Would it not be simpler, in the end, to tell people frankly that a legend is only a legend? They are not children in arms. Why is it accounted so terrible for a clergyman or minister of religion to express openly in the pulpit opinions he can hear in many academical lecture-rooms, and often entertains in the privacy of his study? ”

“ It is to be hoped that the history of this controversy may some day be published, for the picture of the grapple of criticism with a legend in its earlier growth, and of the survival if not victory of the fiction in spite of crushing attack in an age which flatters itself on its intelligence, would be full of sobering instruction for the historical student.
The strongest champion of the story at this crisis was the Rev. Myron Eells, a son of Cushing Eells. In 1882 he published his History of Indian Missions on the Pacific Coast. ”

“ All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.” This evil, we believe, is to be directly ascribed to the influence of the historians whom we have mentioned, and their modern imitators. ”

“ Robertson is humbly following in their steps, but à rebours, or in an inverse sense. They insist on getting more out of the New Testament than any historical testimony could ever furnish; he on getting less. In other respects also he imitates their methods. Thus they insist on regarding the New Testament, and in particular the four Gospels, as a homogeneous block, and will not hear of the criticism which discerns in them literary development, which detects earlier and later couches of tradition and narrative. ”

“ But when, on the other hand, by the study and imitation of ancient authors, the art of embracing a vaster circle of facts springs into being, and the causes and relations of those facts are investigated in order to weld them into visible unity, historic criticism is still lacking to verify events, to examine and define laws and institutions, to colour and almost revive the past in all its varied and changeful aspects. ”

“ Nixon has been the literary editor of The Chicago Inter-Ocean for twenty years or more, and in the columns of this journal he has been the standing champion of the Whitman story, rushing to its defence against criticism with an impetuosity that has rendered him apparently incapable of stating his opponents' position correctly or of verifying his own assertions in rebuttal. ”

“ We may judge of the benefit of historical studies by observing what great defects are incident to the moral and political writers who know nothing of history. A present grievance, or what seems such, swallows up in their minds all other considerations; their little bottle of oil is to still the raging waves of the whole human ocean; their system, a thing that the historian has seen before, perhaps, in many ages, is to reconcile all diversities. Then they would persuade you that this class of men is wholly good, that wholly bad ”

“ We may accept the isolation of the historical critic then, at least in theory, and conceive of him as a fragment of a social historian, as the author of a chapter in the history of the human spirit. But can we isolate the philosophic critic in the same way? ”

“ All the dreary questions of the precise order in which history should be taught—whether backwards or forwards, local first or the reverse, may be brought up if one chooses to do so. But after all, these questions are not very fruitful. What we need most is the historical spirit. ”

“ Language is inadequate to express crises in history; words are weak to reveal a supreme moment in the development of a noble epic. And so now how shall I utter the thoughts that arise as I try to define this crisis, this supreme historical moment? ”

“ Even the attempt, by a purely destructive method of criticism, to manufacture a body, or corpse, rather, of history, by hacking away all legend and tradition to get out what the critic is pleased to call “history,” seems at once unnatural and false. ”

“ First of all, the whole problem of cultural history appears to us as a historical problem. In order to understand history it is necessary to know not only how things are, but how they have come to be. ”

“ The men who, with the compass of criticism in their hands, sailed the uncharted sea of original research proposed a different view. History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions. ”

“ But in the case of Marcus Whitman, the frontier missionary in less than half a century is transformed into a great historic figure who shaped the destiny of the far northwest and saved the Oregon territory to the United States. Such a transformation can be accounted for only in two ways: either the historians and public men of fifty years ago were unaccountably ignorant of an epoch-making achievement of their own day, which has since become known through the discovery of authentic sources of the history of that time at once explaining previous ignorance and establishing the real facts ”

“ That such a page of human history should be possible and common in the record of a civilized society is more appalling than the devastation of war, or the crimes of natural malignity, and we must wonder how any spark of virtue or genius survived it. ”

“ Hence the transcendent importance of criticism next to creation in both spheres: criticism of personalities and criticism of “works.” The mistaking of a little man for a great man, or the reverse, may easily mean the delay of the work of culture for whole generations. And, equally, the confusion of the objects of culture with the objects of civilisation may spell the ruin of a nation. ”

“ Not so very long ago distinguished historians were insisting that the state, as the highest expression of man's social instincts and as the immediate concern of all human beings, is the only fit subject of historical study, and that history, therefore, must be simply "past politics" ”

“ The story of how we have come by our inheritance of freedom, of the age-long upward struggle of mankind, this above all should furnish the inspiration and the guidance for our service of the present. For this reason, emphasis should be laid upon the history of peoples rather than of states, upon the movement of social life rather than upon historical biography. ”

“ Though a work of fiction, it aims at painting the historical features, and such works if faithfully executed throw more light than many so-called histories on the true roots and causes of the Revolution, which are so widely and so gravely misunderstood. ”

“ Without violence done to the rules of criticism, we can not detach the miraculous portions of the history, and then put together the mutilated portions, so as to consist with the undoubted reality or the part which is retained. ”

“ What wonder if there are few who love it for its own sake, when there are so few who know it as it is!' In 1867 that great man thought it necessary to defend history from the charge of being the mere handmaid of political or ecclesiastical controversy, to declare that it should be studied as an end in itself with no ulterior motives. ”

“ Political passions die—History lives; and in an enlightened age like this, it must be written in simple truth, or the clear-sighted generations that follow us will detect the sophistry and falsehood. Impartial history demands honest facts. ”

“ While history itself is to those who study it for sheer interest in the doings of mankind, an art, and one of the greatest;—to those who study it that they may 'learn its lessons', refute a political opponent, or pass a competitive examination, no more than a branch of useful knowledge. ”

“ Men now smile when they read or hear of the attempt of Alexander Sixth to divide the undiscovered world between Spain and Portugal, but what single act of any Pope in the history of the Church has exercised directly and indirectly a more momentous influence on human affairs than this last reminder [80] of the bygone world sovereignty of the Holy See? ”

“ Government is instituted no less for protection of the property, than of the persons, of individuals" (p. 342) .
Madison.
"In a general view I see no reason why the rights of property, which chiefly bears the burden of Government and is so much an object of legislation, should not be respected as much as personal rights in the choice of Rulers." ”

“ But the feelings of nationality against imperial control by Church or State, the growth of the towns and commerce, the gradual development of representative government, the struggles against despotism—these are things he can understand and appreciate and in connection with which he can see the present emerging from the past. Nor should the great personalities of medieval and modern history be neglected, for they have historical interest and importance and serve to give greater interest and definiteness to movements of which they are a part. ”

“ It is the business of history to deal with the crimes of mankind rather than with their virtues. The acts prompted by ambition, the struggles for power or profit, the wiles of diplomacy or intrigue—these are the things that influence the fate of nations and afford matter for the historian. ”

“ Nothing could more effectively catch the public ear and prepare the public mind for resentment against the Catholics than to show that Whitman saved Oregon to the United States and then lost his life a sacrifice to the malignant disappointment of the "Jesuits "and the Hudson's Bay Company.
Some of the heads to the various sections in this collection may be quoted to show its range, but no adequate idea of the hodge-podge can be gained by any description. One must believe it unique in all the vast mass which has issued from the Government Printing Office. ”

“ Nor should we permit ourselves to be deflected in our thought, and from our purpose, by the emphasis which the historian puts, almost exclusively, upon results and by the historian's definition—not merely his interpretation—of facts in the life of men in society. ”

“ Eliminating all the more obvious features of criticism, as throwing no light upon the subject, we come to the consideration of three points,—the domestic, the official, and the social manners of a nation which has been roundly accused of degenerating from the high standard of former years, of those gracious and beautiful years which few of us have the good fortune to remember. ”